


Cat People

by cattajonze



Category: The Monkees (Band), The Monkees (TV)
Genre: Angst, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-10-04 05:16:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20465630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cattajonze/pseuds/cattajonze
Summary: The Monkees care for a litter of kittens! How could that be sad? ... I found a way.





	Cat People

It was a hot summer night, and normally Micky and Davy would be at a bonfire on the beach or at a club while Mike and Peter soaked up some alone time in their respective rooms. Instead it was pouring, and all four of them were cooped up inside the Pad with the television humming in the background, mostly static.

While Micky paced like a caged animal, Davy stared out at the lightning over the ocean glumly. Peter had been planning to use tonight’s free time to catch up on some reading, or fiddle around with some moody new music, but with Micky and Davy around, it was hard to get into the mood. Micky was most fired up in the evening and needed an audience for his crazy ideas. Davy was a junkie for attention, and when he didn’t have girls around, Micky, Peter, and Mike were his fix. So instead of reading, or fiddling, Peter sat on the couch, twiddling his thumbs as he waited for Micky or Davy to inevitably distract him.

Mike, on the other hand, had retreated to his room as soon as the first raindrops fell, determined to have some solitude no matter the weather. 

Peter was about to suggest that they start the 2000 piece puzzle he’d picked up at a yard sale when he heard a hesitant knock at the door. It was barely audible over the roar of rainfall. He frowned quizzically and stood up to look through the peep hole. Nobody there.

But the knock came again, a little louder this time. Peter opened the door, and standing there was Tiffany White, the tiny 10 year old who lived with her mother in the house across the street. She was struggling to hold a large cardboard box, which Peter took from her, puzzling over its strange weight distribution.

“Mr. Peter,” she cried. “Oh please, you have to help me.”

“Tiffany,” Peter said. “Come inside— does your mom know you’re here?”

Tiffany shook her head, no. “She’s at work.” Tiffany’s mother worked at the grocery store a few blocks away. “I—”

“Hey Tiff,” Micky said, bouncing across the room. “Whatcha got in the box?”

Tiffany rubbed at the rain dripping down her face, which seemed to be mixed with her tears. “I found them when I was taking out the trash.”

Peter set the box on the table and he and Davy pulled at the flaps on the top to reveal a scrawny, long-legged cat huddled around three squirming balls of fur.

“We can’t leave them in the rain!” Tiffany wailed. “But my mom will never let me keep four cats.”

The cat looked from Peter to Davy with blazing green eyes and hissed explosively, the sharp sound mellowing to a low growl as each of them pushed their flap back down.

“Oh Tiffany,” Davy said, sitting her on the couch and offering her a tissue. “We’ll take care of them for you.”

Peter and Micky looked at each other, each seeing his own look of skepticism reflected in the other’s face. Mike would never go for this— they could barely take care of themselves.

But Davy’s promise seemed to cheer Tiffany up, so the three of them scrambled to find an umbrella for her to borrow. Davy grabbed a jacket and escorted her back across the street, leaving Peter and Micky with the box, which had begun to sing with high-pitched kitten cries.

“Oh boy,” Micky said, looking at the box with a sort of mild horror. “This is probably a mistake.”

Peter heaved the box off the table and carried it into the bedroom he shared with Davy. “They’re just kittens, Micky. What could possibly go wrong?”

“I don’t know, Pete, but if you’re going to keep them, we probably shouldn’t tell Mike.”

“Oh, we’re definitely not telling Mike,” Peter agreed. 

* * *

Micky, Peter, and Davy decided that the mother cat and her kittens would live in Peter and Davy’s room until they figured out what to do with them. They lined the box with a soft towel and cleared out a space for it in Peter’s closet, which required bulldozing through the large pile of clothing that had accumulated on the floor. (“Oh, _there’s_ my poncho!” Micky cried, earning a side-eye from Davy, who remembered it being a tablecloth.) 

For the first week, the kittens’ eyes were still a colorless blue, and they stumbled around the box clumsily, mewing for their mother whenever they weren’t nursing or sleeping. Peter guessed that they were about 3 weeks old, which meant they’d need their mother for another 2-3 weeks. 

Micky had named the mother Caroline because her green eyes and defensive attitude reminded him of a girl he’d dated briefly in college. Once she’d dried herself off, it became clear that Caroline (the cat) was a real beauty— she was mostly white with a few calico markings on her head and back, her green eyes rimmed with black. That first night, Davy brought her scraps of chicken from the refrigerator and she warmed up to him instantly, rubbing her head on his hands as he tore the meat into smaller pieces for her.

Peter had grown up with cats— his mother had taken in many strays and found homes for them— and now, for the first time ever, experienced Micky and Davy looking to him for expertise. Although Davy claimed to have had made pets of the barn cats when he’d trained as a jockey, the barn cats’ independence meant he had no idea how to care for Caroline. And Micky claimed that because his family had traveled every summer to live with his father on a movie set, they could never have pets.

“One summer, we were in New Mexico, and I caught a lizard,” Micky recalled, his gaze growing distant. “I named him Sparky and he never learned to fetch.”

The arrangement seemed to work, at first. Sure, the kittens’ mewing occasionally woke Peter and Davy at night, but Davy dutifully scooped up Caroline (who now slept in his bed, making herself cozy against his body), placed her in the box, and coaxed the young mother to stay still long enough for each kitten to latch on. As he guided each kitten to a nipple, he hummed softly in a way that made Caroline purr in spite of her growing impatience with nursing.

It reminded Peter of his mother. Watching Davy with the cats gave him the same skin-prickling surge of affection that he’d felt when his mother bottle-fed abandoned kittens or soothed an old tom cat with a burr stuck in his tail. 

* * *

A week passed, and the kittens’ hesitant stumbling turned into confident gamboling around the bedroom. It was shocking to see how much energy the kittens had at 4 weeks, given how much they slept the week before. If Mike was suspicious that Davy, Peter, and Micky were spending so much time in the bedroom with the door closed, he didn’t say anything. 

“Mittens is my favorite,” Davy said as the male kitten, grey with white paws, found a seat on his shoulder and licked his cheek. “Yes you are, sir.”

“You already said that about the other two kittens,” Micky argued. “You just like whichever one is licking you, same as with girls.”

Davy shot him a dirty look. “At least someone _wants_ to lick me,” he countered, and Micky pretended to die, clutching his chest and rolling off the bed.

The female kittens, both paler variations of their mother, slept in Peter’s lap as he sat crosslegged on the floor, reading a book about kitten care from the library. He stroked their heads one by one as he focused, frowning in intense thought.

They heard the front door open and shut.

“Shit,” Davy whispered. “Mike’s home.”

He lifted Mittens from his shoulder and returned him to the box. Peter did the same with the female kittens, but all 3 tumbled back out of the box immediately, one batting at Micky’s untied shoelaces and the other two trying to scale Peter’s pant legs.

“Guys?” Mike’s voice called. “Anybody home?”

Davy raised his eyebrows, looking alarmed as he tried to unhook the kittens from Peter’s legs. Micky tried to tie his shoelaces to remove the source of distraction but the kitten kept interfering. Davy tossed the kittens gently onto his bed and jerked his head to the door.

“Oh hey Mike,” he said as casually as he could muster, opening the door and yanking Micky out with him. “We thought we found a new species of beetle and Micky was having a look at it for us.”

Peter herded the kittens away from the doorway and slipped out himself, clicking the door shut behind him.

“Oh yeah, can I see?”

“Nothing to see, Mike,” Micky shook his head sadly. “It was a chocolate chip.”

“And Peter ate it,” Davy added. “Oh Peter.”

“Oh Peter,” Peter agreed, smiling.

Mike made a face. “You three are acting even weirder than usual. Are we practicing this afternoon?”

They nodded as a group, though all three had completely forgotten their plans to rehearse.

“Okay, then, let’s get set up.”

It took 10 minutes to set up. Micky couldn’t find his drumsticks (they had rolled under the couch). Peter broke a string tuning his guitar. Davy couldn’t find his tambourine.

“For crying out loud,” Mike complained. “Why don’t we keep it on the bandstand?” 

“Sometimes I put it in my room for safekeeping,” Davy said, and there was suddenly a loud, suspiciously tambourine-like crash from the downstairs bedroom. Mike frowned and Davy laughed nervously. “Obviously I should find a safer spot.”

Back inside the bedroom, Davy found all 3 kittens gathered around the tambourine, their tails puffy and their eyes wide. “Be cool,” he whispered, grabbing the tambourine and jogging back to the bandstand.

When practice was over, Micky and Davy ran down to the beach for an impromptu volleyball match while Peter and Mike scrounged in the fridge, trying to decide what was still edible.

Peter sniffed a loaf of bread. “This is still good,” he declared, placing it on the counter as a starting point for dinner. When he looked to Mike for approval, he saw that Mike was standing near their bedroom door, eyes narrowed.

“I thought I heard— does Davy have a girl in there?”

Peter’s heart thumped. “Yes,” he replied, too quickly.

“Then why is he down on the beach?”

Peter shrugged, trying his best not to look conspicuous.

A long, clear meow emanated from the bedroom. Caroline is hungry, Peter thought. Mike gave him a stony look and pushed the door open, revealing Caroline staring up expectantly from the doorway and sending the kittens tumbling off the bed in shock. 

Mike’s mouth was a hard line. “Go get Micky and Davy. We need to talk.”

* * *

“… And Tiffany’s mother would _never_ let her keep them because their landlord won’t allow pets—” Davy explained.

Mike interrupted him. “You mean their landlord, Mr. Babbitt, who is also our landlord?”

Davy stammered. “Well,” he trailed off, sounding defeated. “We promised Tiffany. And we can’t just put them outside in the cold and the rain.”

“Davy, it’s Los Angeles. It’s 85 degrees and sunny almost every day.” Mike sighed as Caroline walked across his lap, waving her tail in his face. In his mind, cats were meant to live outside. His mother would never have let him bring one of their farm cats in the house. Their job was to catch mice and keep them OUT of the house, not lounge around like freeloaders. 

But now Mike looked at Micky, Davy, and Peter, each holding a kitten, so that 6 pairs of eyes pled with him to let the cats stay. As much as Mike viewed himself as the practical one, the leader, and a general no-nonsense guy, it was hard to look at Davy’s big sad eyes, Peter’s trembling chin, and Micky’s downturned mouth and take their kittens away. 

“Fine,” he said finally, and the other three let out breaths of relief. “They can stay until we find homes for them.”

* * *

Once the kitten secret was out, it didn’t make sense to confine them to Peter and Davy’s room. They gave all four cats the run of the Pad, and even Mike liked watching them navigate the spiral staircase and inspect Mr. Schneider with adorable trepidation. The kittens slept where they wanted, often conking out mid-play in seemingly uncomfortable positions, but Caroline remained loyal to Davy, following him around the house at night until he decided to go to bed. 

“It’s weird,” Mike commented to Micky one night as they were climbing into bed. “Peter can barely take care of himself but he’s doing a great job taking care of those cats.”

Micky nodded, stroking Lulu, one of the female kittens, as she settled in to sleep on his pillow. 

“And have you noticed that Davy hasn’t been on a date in 2 weeks?”

Micky’s eyes widened. “You’re right,” he said. “That hasn’t happened since… ever.”

“Have you also noticed,” Mike continued. “That you and I are the only ones looking for people to take these cats off our hands?”

Micky shrugged. He’d helped Mike put up posters advertising adoptable kittens, but only because had Mike asked him. And sure, Peter and Davy weren’t going out of their way to get the kittens adopted, but they talked often about the kind of family the cats deserved. Mittens needed a family with kids, because he had energy to burn. Lulu and Pomona should go to the same home, because they did everything together. 

“Well, it’s only a matter of time until Babbitt figures out we have a house full of cats. We’ll be lucky if only the cats get evicted. Now that the kittens are weaned, we need to work double-time to get all of them out of here.”

Micky rested his head next to Lulu, letting her fur tickle his cheek as she breathed her quick little kitten breaths. The sound of her purr in his ear was louder than the roar of the surf outside, and even more soothing. He smiled, trying to enjoy the kitten time while he still had it.

* * *

A few days later, Micky, Davy, and Peter were laying on the floor, trying to entice the kittens and Caroline with some cat toys Micky had invented. He had claimed they were scientifically superior to balls of yarn, but so far none of the kittens had showed any interest in anything but a loose spring that had freed itself from inside one of the toys. 

When Mike opened the door, a woman in her 40s followed him inside. “Guys, this is Penelope. She’s Caroline’s owner.”

All three of his friends stared back open-mouthed. Mike seemed to expect the response, because he was prepared.

“Penelope moved here a few months ago and Caroline— well, her real name is Pearl— the cat escaped from her car before she could get her inside the house. She saw Caroline’s picture on our poster and recognized her.”

Penelope knelt to the ground and called “Pearly!” and Pearl/Caroline came running, pushing her face into the woman’s palms in the same exuberant way she greeted the four of them. “Oh, boys, thank you so much for taking care of her.”

“Are you taking her kittens, too?” Peter said softly, clutching Lulu to his chest.

“Oh no,” Penelope said. “I— I just can’t keep so many cats in my small apartment. I’m sorry.”

Peter and Micky looked relieved. Davy frowned. “When are you taking her?”

“I was hoping to take her home now,” Penelope said, cradling Pearl in her arms. “I live a few blocks away, though, so would one of you give me a ride?” 

Micky smiled and jumped to his feet. “At your service, ma’am.”

Peter scratched Pearl behind the ears affectionately. “Caroline, it was nice to know you. I hope you have a wonderful life.”

Davy’s frown had turned into an expression of muted horror. He gathered the kittens off the floor and held them out to Pearl, who licked each on the head one by one. The kittens squirmed and mewed until Davy released them reluctantly to the ground, where they raced off to play in another room.

Mike felt his triumph ebb as saw Davy turn pale. “Pete, why don’t you go with them. Help Penelope keep ahold of Pearl.” 

Micky and Peter looked back at Davy before they left, mixtures of confusion and concern on their faces. As they closed the door, Mike watched Davy’s face contort, his mouth turning down sharply at the edges just before he turned his head rapidly, burying his face in his hand as his shoulders convulsed a single time.

“Hey,” Mike said, putting a hand on Davy’s back. He pulled out a chair for Davy, who pushed tears across his face with one hand as he sat down heavily, fighting to control his breathing. Mike pulled up a chair next to him and joined him at the table.

“It’s stupid,” Davy mumbled, looking at his hands as more tears flowed. His red nose and puffy eyes made him resemble a little boy who’d lost his mom at the supermarket more than the girl-crazy bandmate Mike knew. 

“It’s not stupid,” Mike said gently. “Tell me.” 

Davy swallowed, trying to collect himself but failing. His voice wavered and broke as he spoke. “They don’t even know that they’re never going to see their mum again.” 

“Oh,” Mike breathed, a sour chord twanging in his chest as it became clear to him that this was not just about cats. It was easy to forget how much sadness had occurred in Davy’s life when Davy was running around with a new girl every other day, or goofing off during rehearsal, or making friends with everyone on the beach. It was rare to see Davy unhappy, but Mike supposed that everyone had their own ways of covering their pain and their own breaking points. 

“It’s stupid, I’m sorry,” Davy repeated, now precariously composed.

“No, it _is_ sad,” Mike shook his head. “They’re going to miss her.”

Davy’s expression convulsed again and he wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand.

“But they’ll find new families who love them,” Mike went on. “And eventually it won’t hurt as much.”

Davy nodded. A corner of his mouth pulled upward, a sign that he knew Mike wasn’t just talking about cats, either. They sat for awhile without speaking, listening to the cats tear around the living room and laughing softly when Mittens slid ungracefully through a stack of sheet music and fell off the bandstand.

“How do you always know what to say?” Davy asked finally.

Mike shrugged with one shoulder. “I don’t know if I always know what to say, but…” he paused for a moment. “When my dad left, I cried over a damn chicken with a broken leg.”

Davy looked at him with empathy, restraining a smirk.

“If you tell Micky about that, I’ll kill you,” Mike added.

* * *

When Peter and Micky returned, they followed Mike’s lead without any instruction. Peter rubbed Davy’s shoulders while Micky dashed around the Pad, returning to present Davy with a squirming bouquet of kittens.

Davy let Lulu and Pomona scramble back to whatever havoc they’d been wreaking but held onto Mittens, nuzzling him as the kitten lapped at what was left of the tears on his cheeks.


End file.
